CAMP PENDLETON  When Hurricane Sandy roared across the Eastern Seaboard last fall, the “superstorm” demanded an all-out response. Northeastern states asked the federal government to send in the Marines. A leatherneck landing force and helicopter fleet steamed north aboard three Navy ships, and grunts who were heading for combat started shoveling rubble to clear streets on Staten Island, N.Y.

It was the first time in years that a significant Marine contingent had deployed at sea for a disaster on the homefront. For much of the last decade, the Pentagon’s smallest armed force had few Marines to spare during heavy combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now amid the drawdown overseas and increased competition for federal dollars at home, the Marine Corps is honing its disaster response skills. For the second-year running, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is gathering at Camp Pendleton with local, state and federal agencies to plan for “the big one” in California before it happens.

This year’s two-day event sponsored by Headquarters Marine Corps began Wednesday and attracted upward of 200 participants, including military leaders and a planner for U.S. Northern Command – the combatant command overseeing homeland defense and civil support in North America.

Also attending were representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city and county of San Diego, and emergency management specialists from Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“A crisis is going to hit us pretty hard in California,” Lt. Gen. John Toolan Jr., commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said in opening remarks.

“What we need to be able to do, what the Marine Corps prides itself on, is being a 911 force, being able to respond internationally when our nation calls us. But when our community calls, we also need to be fast. We need to be effective,” he said. “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

The event culminates Thursday with a planning exercise for a 7.9 earthquake along the San Andreas fault. On day one in Los Angeles, the simulation estimates: 1,800 people are dead and tens of thousands more are missing, 53,000 are injured, half a million people need medical care and shelter, 267,000 pets are displaced, 1,600 fires burn, and 2.5 million people need food and water.

The Corps has more experience pitching in for overseas disasters. For example, during Operation Tomodachi the Marines responded with some 24,000 U.S. service members to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Assisting civil agencies in the United States is governed by different rules, but the capability is similar, said Brig. Gen. John Broadmeadow, commanding general of the 1st Marine Logistics Group as well as the West Coast Marine brigade responsible for crisis response.

“Put a bunch of Marines, a bunch of equipment on a ship. Park yourself offshore. You’re not a burden on the infrastructure over there and you can still go in and help --same kinds of things we do overseas,” said Broadmeadow, who was deputy commander for Joint Task Force 505 for Operation Tomodachi.

The Marines offer the independence of working from Navy ships, muscle from the infantry, heavy equipment such as bulldozers, trucks, generators and water purification systems, and embedded Navy medical staff to establish aid stations and mobile surgical suites.

After Hurricane Ike in 2008, when the amphibious assault ship Peleliu responded without a Marine landing force, the Navy and Corps stressed that the sea services are more useful in tandem, recalled Timothy Russell, deputy for future operations for U.S. Northern Command.

“Normally you think about Marine units as a more kinetic, operational force. And what is happening really I think over the last couple years is a recognition by the other services that that’s not all they do,” Russell told U-T San Diego. The ability to rapidly deploy from the sea, via self-supporting “lilypads,” with a rotary wing and the strong backs of its manpower: “That is a capability that is very challenging to mimic in any other service.”

Traditionally the Army has been a bigger player in stateside disaster relief. “The Army has been doing it for awhile because the Marines have been elsewhere,” Russell said. “Now there’s an opportunity for the Marines coming back here and the remarkable capability they have.”

During a natural disaster, San Diego County has some advantages. Unlike San Francisco or Manhattan, fallen bridges would not be as isolating (sorry Coronado.) Another plus: several huge military bases with their personnel and equipment.

“The great thing we have going for us in San Diego is the military assets we can leverage through this process,” said John Valencia, program manager for the city of San Diego Office of Homeland Security. Valencia, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine reserves, would be the local point man for the city overseeing the alphabet soup of responders.

As Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the 2007 wildfires in San Diego County demonstrated, the chaotic aftermath of a natural disaster and the array of civilian and governmental agencies involved in emergency response make coordination a challenge.

Marine helicopters were delayed for days waiting for clearance to respond to the San Diego fires. At the time U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter criticized state fire officials for stalling them; state officials said the delay was the result of new procedures stemming from problems coordinating military air assets during the 2003 fires.

One goal of the Camp Pendleton exercise was to clarify the chain of command. Broadmeadow asked: who would order his Marines and sailors to respond on behalf of U.S. Northern Command? Headquarters Marine Corps? Pacific commanders overseeing the Camp Pendleton force?

In the first hours of a disaster, military installations such as Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and Camp Pendleton have agreements with local authorities that permit them to immediately respond and help save lives.

Deployment of military operating forces farther afield is restricted by U.S. law, federal and state constitutions, and Pentagon policy. Obtaining clearance is more cumbersome.

Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history, was a chance to test a new streamlined “dual status” approach putting the National Guard commander in charge of troops answering to both federal and state authorities.

During a crisis in California, the Marines would fall in under that dual status commander, as they did for the northeastern tri-state area when three Navy ships were dispatched during Hurricane Sandy.

“It’s a little bit of an art. We have to be careful about pushing forward, and being too pushy,” increasing confusion, Russell told the gathering of predominantly military leaders.

But on the other hand, “as we discovered from many hurricanes, principally from Hurricane Katrina, we can’t wait for the process … We’ve got to be able to push things forward and have that partnership with (other emergency responders). So they understand we’re not waiting for you to fail, we are here to help you succeed.”

Another change: the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 made it easier for reservists to mobilize for national disasters. That freed some of the bureaucracy that would have kept Marine reservists called up for Hurricane Sandy sidelined.

“My force civil affairs group in Washington, DC — that is far enough away from the incident that their families aren’t affected. We are able to bring them together, get them organized and ready to go,” said Brig. Gen. Paul Lebidine, of San Diego, commanding general of Force Headquarters Group.

If there were a major crisis in her backyard, Navy HM2 Michelle Munsil said she feels prepared for anything. The surgical technician served last year in Helmand province, Afghanistan at Forward Operating Base Edinburgh, where she encountered long working hours and gruesome injuries.

“I’ve gotten the experience I never would have gotten just staying in a hospital, not being deployed,” she said. “It was all day, cases coming in, from infants to adults. I had never seen so many burns in my life coming in, full body burns. Never seen so many amputations. Explosions that have left them without any genitalia or anything like that. You will never see that in the United States, thankfully not.”

One difference might be the number of civilian casualties. “If you can imagine mass casualties of U.S. citizens, that is going to be tough on these guys. So that is one of the things you have to mentally prepare them for too,” Broadmeadow said.

On the medical side, their job would be essentially the same: stabilize the patients and move them to a higher level of care. But responding on the homefront would have special significance. “I think it would mean more to me and to these guys here I’m serving with, to help the ones here on our homeland as compared to being forward. That’s why we signed up, to serve. Whether we are serving here or serving there, we are serving our country,” said Navy Lt. Sal Carapazza, Alpha Surgical Company commander for the 1st Medical Battalion.